Under Pressure

miniature sculptures

The second series „Under Pressure” frees itself from two-dimensions. Here, the artist works with individual fragments of coal of various sizes. He leaves these parts in their form, but polishes them such that they develop a fine gloss.

Christian Rock draws inspiration from the diversity of diamonds’ appearances, highlighting their formal peculiarity through the particular insertion of a diamond. The diamond’s placement provides the coal with an alignment, a visual form. Only then does an above or below, a front and rear, appear. The artist conveys his joy of discovering different forms to interested parties by being able to create distinct multi-piece compositions from the various individual pieces. This work also shows the divergence of two realities, namely, the highly valuable material of the diamond and the material of the almost trivial coal. Christian Rock ultimately scrutinises the different culturally encoded values of these materials with the two image series „Diamond Sky“ and „Under Pressure“.

In the context of contemporary art, the use of diamonds is closely associated with the name of British artist Damien Hirst. Within the context of the auctioning of his diamond-studded skull (2007) for 74 million euros, as the most expensive piece of contemporary art, the debate about the value of art flared up. Does the value of art always have to be limited to sentiment? Or may it also be linked to the material?

Christian Rock knows how to differentiate himself in a convincing manner from the moralistic connotations of this discussion: as religion and other ideologies provide less and less sense in the postmodern consumer society, only the diamond remains true for him in its material value.